"San Francisco-based Caustic Graphics has developed a new patent pending technology that can actually bring ray-tracing that generates highly realistic accurate three-dimensional images to computer gaming. Ray-tracing is currently really only used in high budget Hollywood productions and is a rather tedious process where a short scene can take months to generate with ray-tracing." business2press.com reports.

Read this interesting article here: http://business2press.com/2009/03/09/caustic-graphics-makes-ray-tracing-realistic-for-gaming/

Free 3D animation package these days it's something very rare if you'll ask me, but Blender exists on the market, well, many years now and makes success step by step by getting new artists and users involved.

Blender is available for many platforms including MacOS and you can download it for free here: http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/

More about Blender 2.5 roadmap: http://www.blender.org/development/current-projects/blender-25-project/

CGenie interviewed Ton Roosendaal, Chairman of the Blender Foundation and you can read this interesting article here: 

http://www.cgenie.com/articles/130-blending-in-with-the-competition.html

Digital Photography School published 12 ways to add randomness and creativity to your photos. If you photo a lot or if you're just the beginner, these tips will always be helpful.

http://digital-photography-school.com/adding-randomness-to-your-photos 

If you like to draw sketch, you may want to try newest SketchBook product by Autodesk. It's very simple but yet quite powerful product for sketching. Mac & Win versions available.

Minimum System Requirements*
- Mac OS X, Version 10.4, 10.5 G4, G5, or Intel-based CPU*
- 256 MB of RAM
- Graphics card capable of 1024 x 768 display
- SketchBook Pro for OS X is delivered as a Universal Binary supporting both PPC and Intel-based Mac systems.
- Note: Autodesk SketchBook Pro is Leopard ready.

DOWNLOAD MAC

I've just bought Intuos 3 A3 tablet, and boy, I got to tell you, it's a beast ! I love that tablet and after 2 weeks of using I will never change it to anything else. I've heard there is no better tabled around.... oh, maybe except Axiotron's Mod Book Pro which is Mac Book Pro converted into tabled, but the price starts around $5k. Can you imagine? 5 thousand US dollars for a laptop which is your tablet? That's crazy! Anyway, guys at ModelMayhem.com found that probably (if the photos are real), Wacom's Intuos 4 tablet may be around the corner as it was found in one of the Future Shops. Here's the photo:

Source: http://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=426152

I am a big fan of Houdini 3D package made by great guys at Sidefx.com. I'm watching this software development since version 5 and it's been few years now. Houdini have changed a lot and it finally got cool dynamics two versions back and now, guys at Sidefx are close to releasing version 10. I even own the license of H9 HD which is $99. It has all possibilities of full licensed version but it's for personal use only. If you want to buy full commercial version as it's called Houdini Master, it's going to cost you almost $10k :)

Anyway, Sidefx is close to going Gold with version 10 and you can read some interesting article about it straight from Sidefx office at Sidefx President's Blog 

Most interesting for me is that I've been talking to Sidefx guys about Mac version around 2004 when I worked in Hollywood, but they told me there is no market for MacOS yet, so if some big client will ask them for compiling current Windows/Linux/UNIX version, they will do it. So, after few years they finally did it and starting from version 9, you can use Houdini on you Mac. I've never said that, but hey, Sidefx guys, great job ! Thanks for listening !

Check out these cool fluid simulations made with H10.

I'm very sceptic about all new hardware accelerator which should work but it's not always the true. This time it seems to be true thanks to Turbo.264 HD by Elgato. Guys at Digmo.co.uk published nice review of that product. Check it out: http://www.digmo.co.uk/hardware/turbo264-hd-announced/ 

Well, well, well.... AppleInsider reports that we may see new iPhone coming later this year. As it's reported, it will probably have new rear high resolution camera and better hardware for gaming. So, if iPhone will have new performance, so will iPod Touch, right? :)

Read full story here: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/20/source_apples_next_gen_iphone_has_video_camera.html

 Asus has published one of most interesting laptop concepts ever - fold/unfold notebook. The concept is not only a concept, but it's going to be real this year. Asus plans to release it around October 2009 and it will probably cost between $1.000 and $1.500. Not to shabby. Watch the presentation..... It's interesting.

Source: http://www.netbookchoice.com/2009/03/07/asus-foldunfold-concept-coming-to-netbooks-soon/

I'm not a big fan of Microsoft if you know me, but this commercial made me curious. It's worth to see. Nice design animation: microsoft sustainability

Direct link: http://ohhello.tv/video/MS_Sustainability_web.mov (44MB)

Check it out.